All, I have seen a number of posts that mention if rsync does not work for you (emerge --sync) that "emerge-webrsync" can get you a portage snapshot.

My Gentoo servers at home used to "emerge --sync" once a night, and at some time ago (a few months) it stopped working.

Now I use a Cisco 1841 with reflexive ACL's as my firewall, with a dedicated static IP for the main server. I have visibility over the network bits, what I would like to do is understand why the "emerge --sync" using rsync stopped working.

I saw a post somewhere that the newer rsync client changed it's behavior, but posts were not specific as to what the behavior was?

I have my server emerge --sync every few days, not every night - but it still seems to be working... All my other machines sync off of my server... I have a static IP with "consumer/home" networking equipment... I don't firewall off rsync or web ports..._________________Intel Core i7 2700K@ 4.1GHz/HD3000 graphics/8GB DDR3/180GB SSDWhat am I supposed watching?

I have my server emerge --sync every few days, not every night - but it still seems to be working... All my other machines sync off of my server... I have a static IP with "consumer/home" networking equipment... I don't firewall off rsync or web ports...

After reading your post I went to look at my firewall and found it was a bit more relaxed than I thought, and my local gentoo rsync mirror is actually visible from the outside. While it's not a real big problem, I didn't expect it...

Might want to run tcpdump or wireshark on your ether port and see if anything's getting back to your machine...

Does other stuff work (web, etc.)? is it only rsync that's broken?_________________Intel Core i7 2700K@ 4.1GHz/HD3000 graphics/8GB DDR3/180GB SSDWhat am I supposed watching?

After reading your post I went to look at my firewall and found it was a bit more relaxed than I thought, and my local gentoo rsync mirror is actually visible from the outside. While it's not a real big problem, I didn't expect it...

Might want to run tcpdump or wireshark on your ether port and see if anything's getting back to your machine...

Does other stuff work (web, etc.)? is it only rsync that's broken?

Well.. So far just rsync.

<sigh> Wow... so I set up TCPDUMP, and in another session started the "emerge --sync" and the first site it hit just worked.. :-\

I really wanted to dog this down and post most details of a way to fix this. But if it won't stay broke...

I will watch it for a few days... if it breaks I will post the tcpdump.

I have never set up my local gentoo firewall (ipchains??) so if it got updated in a previous emerge world, I would have missed that.. good idea to check though!

I noticed you have SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" in make.conf...

I don't get any results from pinging rsync.namerica.gentoo.org, but rsync.us.gentoo.org and rsync.ca.gentoo.org are pinging fine. Maybe choose one of those and replace. Maybe the namerica name was changed a few months ago (I don't see it in mirrorselect.)